Working with Giants and Adversarial Actors

In December last year I found myself in a rather isolated corner of the world.

It took 3 plane rides and a 7-hour car ride through muddy tracks with barely any roads. I was told that it is not uncommon for people to vanish here. My team’s security consultants rated this place as ‘very high risk’ - of what, they didn’t specify. I was there to do some research of known egregious issues.

Two weeks after I had left, the place that I was investigating exploded, resulting in many fatalities.

Part of my work involves probing hard to reach, inaccessible places. I am rarely on the front-line, but I work with many Giants who are.

Many of them have been through the most wrenching tests of character, putting a lot on the line to do what they believe is the right thing. Some have gone against the subtle treachery of corporate crime, others fight disinformation and combat censorship, and then there’s those that risk a lot to investigate alleged wrongdoings.

The tough part is the cognitive dissonance: if what they do is to truly expose wrongdoing, then why are they treated like a skunk at a picnic (for powerful people) when they speak out against exploitative working conditions and unsafe living environments?

After the fatal explosion, I spent the entire day in the office furiously writing to relevant stakeholders. And I got to work with another group of giants: journalists.

Working with ‘independent’ journalists is rather new to me - I am now embedded in a new work environment where media outlets and civil society actors play a much larger role in keeping those in power in check than what I have been exposed to previously. This is my own judgement but I think society is all the better for it.

Beyond experiencing civic engagement like no other, perhaps what surprised me most is how civil society organizations actively contribute to policymaking and the democratic process, bringing to the table alternative and valuable perspectives. Observing and occasionally being a part of this process has been a deeply educational and humbling experience.

Anyway - news of the explosion made international headlines, my team got cracking on a documentary on this issue, and are now working towards holding responsible parties accountable. Unfortunately, fatal explosions in said place are not uncommon, and many violations occur around the globe that my team also researches - most don’t make it to the headlines and it often goes unnoticed. So there’s a lot more to do.

On the other side of the spectrum are what I call adversarial actors. I occasionally cross paths with them - corporations, some Governments, agents, (potentially) spies. In situations where they are under a perceived threat, they have the power to act disproportionately to sweep things under the rug. They are adversarial in the sense that they would, without hesitation, wield excessive power to achieve their own goals at the expense of others, and would go to extra lengths to suppress information if it suits their needs.

(The image above is AI generated - all the adversarial actors be sniffing out my metadata :o))

The definition of a giant and adversarial actor is of course contingent on where one sits.

My view is not popular in the office, but I often observe that both sides are in the pursuit of similar goals: the advancement of human society. It is on the approach and ideology of how one can go about doing so where the difference is stark, and where major issues start to bubble.

Some believe human society can advance only when there is stability, and stability should be protected at all cost. Others believe that human society must advance with everyone in tow; advancement at the expense of others is not advancement at all. These two groups butt heads frequently.

It is easy to be compelled to take sides and virtue signal at definitions of morality and what can and cannot be acceptable. Oftentimes this leads nowhere other than utter contempt for the other, alienating people and pushing them more into the bubble they are in.

But perhaps we can also ask another question: if people value the advancement of society, then how do we get there safely, if there are two opposing sides to this?